Bruce Reed: Another Clinton centrist joins Obama White House

Bruce Reed will be Vice President Biden's new chief of staff. He was a senior aide to President Clinton and a leader in centrist Democratic policy circles. Does this bode ill for liberals' agenda?

ZUMA Press/Newscom

Former President Bill Clinton (l.) and Bruce Reed appear at Barnes and Noble to promote 'The plan-big ideas for America,' co-authored by Reed and Rahm Emanuel (not pictured), in this 2006 file photo. Reed will be Vice President Joe Biden's new chief of staff.

“I’ve known and admired Bruce for over 20 years,” said Mr. Biden in a statement. “We worked closely together to pass the crime bill in the 1990s, and I’ve frequently sought his advice and counsel in the years since.”

Bringing back old hands from a previous administration of the same party is a time-honored Washington tradition. Some liberals are worried that naming centrists to such important posts bodes ill for their agenda. But at least one high-profile progressive, former Democratic chairman Howard Dean, suggested at a recent Monitor breakfast that temperament can trump politics. He said that bringing in Mr. Daley as chief of staff is a “huge plus” despite their policy differences, calling him “an adult” who shows respect to different points of view.

Reed served Mr. Clinton for all eight years of his presidency – four years as chief domestic policy adviser, and before that two years as deputy domestic policy adviser and two years as assistant to the president for domestic policy planning. In addition to Reed’s work on crime legislation, Biden also notes that Reed helped win passage of welfare reform and with Clinton’s education agenda. Reed had worked on the Clinton-Gore campaign and, before that, worked on the staff of then-Senator Gore.